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Design Matters

Creating Powerful Images for Worship

Abingdon Press

Building Doorways to Truth

Design Principle: Creativity and Metaphor

The first principle for good design has little to do with design skills, software proficiency, or even artistic ability. Before a designer ever puts pen to paper or mouse to mouse pad, he or she must develop a concept that will effectively and clearly communicate the message.

Each of us is creative—even those who might claim that the creativity gene skipped a generation. In the creation story of Genesis 1, God models the creative process, demonstrating that good things take time. Although God could have made all of creation happen in an instant, instead God demonstrates meticulous intentionality and the importance of design.

How does creativity emerge? There are many different forms that creativity can take, but one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, forms is through a focus on metaphor.

What exactly is a metaphor? Simply put, metaphor is a tangible way to express a story, thought, or idea. The metaphor becomes tangible because it uses familiar symbols to compare and contrast one thing or idea with another. Comparing or contrasting familiar objects, stories, and situations can make difficult concepts more accessible to the listener or viewer.

Metaphor is a doorway through which the viewer can enter into a truth. A metaphor is a comparison between two seemingly unrelated objects, where one's characteristics are transferred onto another. For example, "God is a roaring lion." If we are not obsessed with a literal interperation of the texts of the Bible, as if seeking to define truth through a set of propositions, we know that God is not really a lion (or a bull who was worshipped by some people in Israel). But we know that God seemingly behaves like a lion, which is a powerful, royal symbol for a ruler. The characteristics of a lion are suggested for the purpose of imparting understanding and truth. This truth still has room for ambiguity and mystery, because God is and God is not a lion.

Few beings or things seem more abstract than a God somewhere "up there"? Perhaps that's why God repeatedly shows up in the Bible through metaphor, from a burning bush to a pillar of cloud and, ultimately, as a Body. Even after God comes Incarnate in Jesus, God's Spirit appears as a dove, or tongues of fire, or a rushing wind. The stories of faith in God are told with and through metaphor.

This ancient wisdom wasn't limited to God's people, either. Aristotle wrote in 322 BCE, "The greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an eye for resemblance."

In fact, it could be argued that the world has a much better handle on metaphor in the present time than the church. Metaphor is immersed throughout the increasingly digital culture, both as a form of expression, more fundamentally, as a way of understanding truth.

An Experiment in Metaphor

As an experiment, one morning as Len left the house he decided to monitor his experience of metaphor. His wife had left the car radio on the adult contemporary station the previous day, so the first song he heard when he pulled out of the driveway was called "White Flag," by the artist Dido. In it, Dido laments the end of a relationship in which she still loves her significant other. She uses the white flag, and a distressed ship, as metaphors for her feelings. Next was the contemporary classic by Elton John, "Candle in the Wind." In it the songwriter compares the life and death of the American celebrity Marilyn Monroe to a fragile candle who was too easily blown out by destructive forces around her. After two melancholy love songs, Len was feeling a little nauseated so he switched to an alternative rock station, The Edge, whose name itself is a metaphor. They were playing a popular song by Coldplay, "Clocks." As you might imagine, the song was not literally about clocks. The first four experiences of his day were metaphorical.

Later that day as he worked on a database, he was struck by the number of churches whose very identity is rooted in metaphor. There were records for churches called The River, The Journey, Crossroads, The Oasis, Pathways, True North, and more. The congregation of the modern era sought to find meaning in linear fashion by naming itself the "First Church" of its respective community. The congregation of the digital era seeks meaning instead through metaphor.

Three Reasons Why Metaphor Is Important

In addition to its ubiquity in culture, there are three fundamental reasons why focusing creativity on metaphor is important.

First, metaphor makes the message easier to understand. When there are elements of a biblical story that are hard to connect with, or there is language that doesn't make sense in today's culture, metaphor opens a door into surprising possibilities.

At one congregation, we were part of a worship design team that developed a service around the story of John the Baptist, who was preparing for the coming of Christ as told in Luke 3:16-17. The team expressed concern that many of the elements in the passage are foreign and confusing to a non-agricultural, urban society. John uses language such as "thong," (which means something completely different today than it did in Jesus' day), "winnowing fork," "threshing floor," and "chaff"—all objects with which suburbians might not be familiar. Beyond the confusing language, the crux of John's message is purity. The team didn't want the message to get lost in translation.

So, the team focused its creativity on designing a metaphor that would connect John's message with this present culture, and we settled on one of today's most pervasive beverages: coffee. The filter plays the part of the winnowing fork that separates the wheat (or flavor of the coffee) from the chaff (or grinds). When the water passes through a filter full of ground coffee beans, the result is a pure cup of coffee. The grinds are tossed away. John's message reconnects in a way that many people can understand.

It's unlikely that the worshippers would retain their awareness of purity if we had shown a staged video clip of an actual threshing floor. The resemblances for a daily understanding of sin and evil would evaporate before the projector is turned off. But with coffee, something happens after worship is over on the weekend. On Monday morning, most of the viewers rise and make coffee. Suddenly, in daily life their routine behaviors become reminders of the Gospel; in this case, what it means to be pure.

Second, metaphor is the glue that makes the message stick. This glue, retention, is the second reason to use metaphor. When a metaphor is employed and the hard work of redeeming the metaphor is done, people will carry the message with them for much longer than they would have otherwise.

Consider another worship service design with a youth pastor, on the subject of racial reconciliation. While designing the service, the African-American youth pastor shared a personal story about his time at a small, mostly Caucasian, Christian college. As he familiarized himself with his new surroundings, he was disturbed by some of the art in one of the buildings on campus. A very large mural depicting heaven filled one of the cathedral ceilings.

Efrem scanned the painting back and forth and was frustrated by what he saw. This representation of heaven left something out. It was filled only with European faces in angelic poses. He wrestled with this painting as he asked himself, "Do I fit into a heaven like that?" His internal response was, "I don't think this is what heaven will look like at all. All who believe will dwell there together, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status."

His sermon argued that if segregation has no place in heaven and if believers will live in heaven together in harmony, then they should strive to do the same on earth. So the worship design team developed the theme of "A Preview of Heaven" and the metaphor of movie previews. Just as Movie trailers give the viewer a sense of what the upcoming movie will be like before they see it, so should the earthly expression of the kingdom of God give the world a preview of heaven, where no one is excluded.

Jason created an animation to start worship that mimicked the style of the cheesy clips that run between the trailers and the feature, filled with dancing refreshments, crying babies, and ringing cell phones. The sanctuary was decked out with theater decorations (including a row of theater seats on stage). The team served popcorn to worshipers as they entered the room. The worship graphics had a movie preview theme.

Six months after that worship celebration a woman from the congregation said, "Jason, I've got to tell you something. You've ruined my movie going experience." She went on to explain, "It's actually a good thing. Every time I go to the movies now and I see that cheesy animation that runs before the movie starts, I leave the theater with a renewed passion for living a preview for heaven on Earth." She continued, "And it hasn't just happened once, it happens every time I go."

We knew that metaphors made the message easier to understand, but until then, we had not realized how it helped worshipers recall the message, with a certain degree of depth, even a long time later. When worship planners use metaphors from the culture and do the hard work of redeeming them, the culture becomes a reminder of the Gospel. This means that the Gospel becomes inescapable because culture is inescapable. Not all metaphors from the culture are redeemable, though. Be careful what you choose!

Third, and perhaps most importantly, metaphor is a key part of the design process because it was Jesus' model for public ministry. Mark 4 tells a story from the early part of Jesus' public ministry, in which he tells the parable of the sower. It's a long parable (vv. 39). Afterwards, when the crowds had left and the disciples were alone with Jesus, they revealed to him that they had no clue what he had been saying. Possibly frustrated at their lack of understanding, Jesus took the time to explain the entire parable to them, actually spending more time on the explanation than he had on the parable itself (vv. 10-20).

Instead of concluding that such a creative presentation of the Gospel didn't work, and returning to the religious rhetoric he had learned in the Temple (Luke 2:41-52), Jesus continued to speak in parables, telling the parables of lamp on the stand (Luke 8:16-18), the growing seed (Luke 8:5-8), and the mustard seed (Luke 13:18-19). "With many similar parables Jesus spoke the word to them, as much as they could understand. He did not say anything to them without using a parable. But when he was alone with his own disciples, he explained everything" (Mark 4:33-34).

Parables were Jesus' exclusive public style! He didn't simply use parables as an alternative for the dumb ones in the crowd. Metaphorical teaching was his only public method. Jesus understood that, to communicate ideas with effectiveness, he had to present his teaching in a medium that made sense to his audience.

People in our time still listen best when spoken to in a familiar language. This is the essence of metaphor.

The same is true in visual design. It is not sufficient simply to use the screen to present text in worship, however creatively treated; the best designs use visual metaphors to communicate basic ideas and thoughts. The presence of metaphor is at the core of learning to think in image. It is what separates good design from bad because it is the primary means with which we can express creativity.

How does this translate into designing graphics for worship? This is a question that we're still learning to answer, too. We're not certain that anyone has our image future in worship figured out yet. And we're not alone: the media industry experiments, too. Those who are behind the times in the advertising industry are in a panic because one of its key target audiences, the eighteen- to thirty-four-year old male, is so attuned to interactive technologies such as TiVo that they are choosing to delete or ignore traditional advertising (known as features and benefits, or F&B, ads) because it's "boring"—i.e., they don't communicate through metaphor. David Art Wales of Ministry of Culture, a New York advertising consulting firm, says, "There's a huge lure to obscurity. That's one of the keys—giving people something to discover, which is the antithesis of the way most advertising works." As designers of worship, don't underestimate your congregation's ability to decipher meaning through image. Make sure though, that you actually have a metaphor in the first place.

Even without realizing it, novices often don't completely understand how metaphor works. The word metaphor is often used incorrectly as a generic term to describe anything visual. Metaphor is something very specific that is achieved through much effort.

To know if you have a metaphor, fill in the blank to this statement: This message, idea, or passage is like _________. For instance you could say the idea of a spiritual life without regular prayer and Christian community is like living off of fast food. A person is technically eating but not doing himself or herself any good with such a diet. You might call the worship service "Fast Food Faith."

Metaphors should also be quickly and easily understood without detailed explanation. Worship designers should be able to write how a metaphor connects to a biblical idea in a sentence. Often a four to seven word title phrase (or theme sentence) on a graphic is enough of a description to make the metaphor clear. Additionally, since the purpose is to create images, the metaphor cannot simply be wordplay but must be visual in nature.

Examples:

•Fast Food Faith, on discipleship, with the image of some food in fast food packages, or a drive-through menu board

•King of the Jungle, on God, with the image of a strong lion, à la Lion King or Chronicles of Narnia

•Pure to the Last Drop, on purity, with the image of a cup of coffee

•Can You Hear Me Now?, on prayer, with the image of a mobile phone

•Metamorphosis, on spiritual transformation, with the image of a butterfly

•Restored, on salvation, with the image of a car being restored in a garage setting

•The Whole Truth and Nothing But, on truth, with the image of a lie detector

As you begin to design, look for ways to communicate ideas through visual metaphors. Tap into your creativity. Think about visual equivalents. Avoid prepositions and move toward experiential words and objects. Brainstorm about everything from current pop culture references to pithy sayings. And, unlike the list of examples above (which are appropriate to a book genre), stay away from bullets on the screen because bullet points are best left to BULLET-ins.

Using The Best of Design Culture

Design Principle: References

One of the urban legends in the movie business concerns Steven Spielberg's beginnings as a film director. Allegedly, Spielberg snuck onto the Universal lot at the age of sixteen, acquired an office, gave his name to the switchboard so he could get calls, and hung around until he established himself. He "faked it 'til he made it." Even if it turns out that the legend is mostly romanticized myth, there is empowerment in that story.

As a college student in the early 90s, Len felt a call to communicate the Gospel by using the language of film and TV (the Internet came later). Len found that experience in the professional production world was hard to obtain. So he often "faked it." This feeling, of not really being technically up to the task, lasted even into his first full-time media ministry position at Ginghamsburg Church. He had convinced others of his expertise and suddenly had to deliver—and not occasionally but every week!

With no art school education and little experience, one of the ways Len "faked it" through those first days as a local church media minister was by watching television. If while watching TV or a movie at home, he saw a video treatment or edit sequence or shot selection that looked cool, he would punch record on the VCR or scribble a storyboard down in a notepad. If it was on tape, he would take the clip to the church, digitize it into the computer, and then watch it forwards and backwards, frame by frame, to try to figure out what exactly had happened that made watching it so very engaging.

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Excerpted from Design Matters by Jason Moore, Len Wilson. Copyright © 2006 Jason Moore and Len Wilson. Excerpted by permission of Abingdon Press.
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